Hammer Down Town debuts with Boilers’ home opener, with tiny homes available for $457 a night from Try It Tiny, a company owned by Purdue president’s daughter Maggie Daniels

Maggie Daniels, founder of Try It Tiny, talks about at Hammer Down Town and set up of the eight tiny homes before the Purdue football home opener against Vanderbilt, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019 in West Lafayette. The tiny home community from Try It Tiny, located at the corner of 3rd st. and McCutcheon drive, has eight homes available for booking for six home football games this season.(Photo: Nikos Frazier | Journal & Courier)

WEST LAFAYETTE – By Friday afternoon, Maggie Daniels figured her company’s collection of tiny homes, wheeled this week onto a lot just north of the Purdue West Shopping Center, should be looking the way it’s supposed to be for Purdue’s football season – a small tailgating enclave called Hammer Down Town.

As of Thursday morning, Daniels – owner of the Zionsville-based Try It Tiny and the daughter of Purdue President Mitch Daniels – and a small crew from her company were still scrambling to prep the eight homes on wheels for a crowd willing to spend $457 a night on a new campus gameday experiment.

“We’ve got two days to give it the once over,” Maggie Daniels said Thursday morning, a day after the eight tiny homes were hauled to the spot within sight of Ross-Ade Stadium in the distance. “There’s a lot to do to get it just right for the football season.”

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Hammer Down Town, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019 in West Lafayette. The tiny home community from Try It Tiny, located at the corner of 3rd st. and McCutcheon drive, has eight homes available for booking for six home games this season.(Photo: Nikos Frazier | Journal & Courier)

Starting with Saturday’s home opener against Vanderbilt, Hammer Down Town – a new collaboration between Try It Tiny and Purdue’s President’s Council – is scheduled to be a fixture near the corner of Third Street and McCormick Road for six Purdue football game weekends. The final weekend will be tied to the Nov. 2 game against Nebraska. The high-end camp will be gone before the season’s home finale, the Old Oaken Bucket game against Indiana on Nov. 30.

As of Thursday, Maggie Daniels said the tiny homes – stocked with kitchens, heat and air conditioning, full bathrooms and equipped to sleep up to four in roughly 200 square feet of living space – have only a few openings remaining this season.

Hammer Down Town is a follow up, of sorts, to a series of one-off, off-campus rentals Try It Tiny brought to West Lafayette for Purdue football games in 2017 and 2018.

“We’re catering not so much to the tiny home enthusiast as we are to a dedicated fan, in this case the Purdue tailgating community,” Maggie Daniel said. She compared the Hammer Down Town lodging to package accommodations her three-year-old company has arranged at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the Indianapolis 500 or the Electric Forest music festival in Rothbury, Michigan, and the Country Concert in Fort Loramie, Ohio.

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Maggie Daniels, founder of Try It Tiny, talks about at Hammer Down Town and set up inside one of the eight tiny homes before the Purdue football home opener against Vanderbilt, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019 in West Lafayette. The tiny home community from Try It Tiny, located at the corner of 3rd st. and McCutcheon drive, has eight homes available for booking for six home football games this season.(Photo: Nikos Frazier | Journal & Courier)

“I like the fact that we’re going to spend the season here, where people will actually get to see what we’re doing and to maybe say, ‘I want to do that for next year,’” Maggie Daniels said. “It’s been great to partner with the university on this.”

Mitch Daniels found himself fending off criticism when the deal between Try It Tiny and Purdue Research Foundation, a private nonprofit arm of the university, came to light. Mitch Daniels told the J&C at the time that university officials “bent over triple-backwards,” adding extra steps to find alternate vendors, to avoid suspicions that nepotism put his daughter’s Try It Tiny on prime tailgating real estate. And even then, Purdue’s president said, he considered nixing an arrangement that offered access to PRF-owned ground but didn’t, according to university officials, involve money exchanging either way between the school and the business.

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Inside one of the eight tiny homes at Hammer Down Town, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019 in West Lafayette. The tiny home community from Try It Tiny, located at the corner of 3rd st. and McCutcheon drive, has eight homes available for booking for six home games this season.(Photo: Nikos Frazier | Journal & Courier)

In a Feb. 25 memo from PRF that explained how the deal came together, the tailgate community concept started with the university’s development office pursuing a tiny home suggestion from the President’s Council, an 18,000-plus member group of alumni who give $1,000 or more annually, for the 2018 football season. That led to Try It Tiny. Mitch Daniels said he shelved that idea, recognizing what some might think and asking the development office to call out for other proposals. According to the memo, four other vendors approached by Purdue – from Airbnb to RV rental firms – took a pass, leaving Try It Tiny.

According to the memo, Mitch Daniels recused himself from a vote and discussions about the deal by the Purdue Research Foundation board, which his chairs.

On Thursday morning, Amy Noah, Purdue’s vice president for development, came to Hammer Down Town to look around and see whether she could master the combination locking system on one of the tiny homes. Noah had initially hoped for a tiny home tailgate for the 2018 season, before Purdue’s president slowed the process for a year.

“This looks great,” Noah said. “We’re finding people are really interested. And once it’s up and going, I think the momentum will get going, and it’s going to grow.”

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The kitchen area and bathroom inside one of the eight tiny homes at Hammer Down Town, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019 in West Lafayette. The tiny home community from Try It Tiny, located at the corner of 3rd st. and McCutcheon drive, has eight homes available for booking for six home games this season.(Photo: Nikos Frazier | Journal & Courier)

Maggie Daniels, still getting tiny homes stocked with water and powered up for the first of six football weekends, said she could see that, too. Hammer Down Town featured eight of the 20 tiny homes her company owns. (Try It Tiny also serves as an Airbnb of sorts for other people who have tiny homes.) She said she’s also fielded interest from other universities.

Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.

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A sign advertises the eight tiny homes in Hammer Down Town, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019 in West Lafayette. The tiny home community, located at the corner of 3rd st. and McCutcheon drive, has eight homes available for booking for six home games this season.(Photo: Nikos Frazier | Journal & Courier)